Jeffrey Swann, piano
Jeffreey Swann enjoys an international performing career which has taken him throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. He won first prize in the Dino Ciani Competition sponsored by La Scala in Milan, a gold medal at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and top honors at the Warsaw Chopin, Van Cliburn, Vianna da Motta and Montreal Competitions, as well as the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York City. His large and varied repertoire includes more than 60 concertos as well as solo works ranging from Bach to Boulez.

In addition to presenting lecture/recitals worldwide, Mr. Swann has performed with the symphonies of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Indiana, Dallas, Saint Louis, Phoenix, Houston, Lexington, Baltimore and Minneapolis; and in Europe with the orchestras of Rotterdam, The Hague, Belgian National and Radio, Santa Cecilia, La Scala, Maggio Fiorentino (Florence), RAI Turin and Rome, Südwest Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Prague Philharmonic, Radio France de Montpellier, and the London Philharmonia, among many others. The conductors with whom he has performed include Zdenek Macal, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marek Janowski, Kazimirz Kord, Myung-Whun Chung, Roberto Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti and Leonard Slatkin. In addition, he continues to lecture regularly at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and at Wagner Societies in the United States and Italy. Mr. Swann has also served as a judge at many competitions, most recently at the Utrecht International Liszt Competition.

Mr. Swann can be heard on Ars Polona, Deutsche-Gramophon, RCA-Italy, Replica, Fonit-Cetra, Music & Arts, and Agorá recordings. His CD, “The Virtuoso Liszt” (Music & Arts) won the Liszt Society’s Grand Prix, and his first volume of the Complete Beethoven Sonatas (Agorá) was chosen one of the Best of the Year by Fanfare magazine. His most recent release features works for piano and orchestra by Chopin with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano.

Since 2007 Jeffrey Swann has been Artistic Director of the Dino Ciani Festival & Academy in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Since 2008 he has been the Adel Artist-in-Residence at Northern Arizona University, and in the Fall of 2010 will join the faculty as Professor of Piano at New York University.

Mary Nessinger, mezzo-soprano
The mezzo-soprano Mary Nessinger has been heard in concert and recital throughout the United States and Europe, and is rapidly gaining attention for her critically acclaimed performances of some of the last century's most dynamic works and for her astute interpretations of standard repertoire. She has appeared in the finest venues in America and around the world. Mary Nessinger has devoted herself to the performance of new music, working with some of today's brightest and most innovative composers, including John Harbison, Earl Kim, Lee Hyla, George Crumb, Simon Bainbridge, Michael Ruszczynski, and Ezra Sims. She studied at the Eastman School with Seth McCoy and Jan DeGaetani, and in New York with Chloe Owen.

Ida Kavafian, violin
Ida Kavafian enjoys an international reputation as one of the most versatile musicians performing today. With a repertoire as diverse as her talents, Ms. Kavafian has electrified stages as a recitalist as well as a soloist with major orchestras across the globe. For 25 years, Ms. Kavafian has been the artistic director of the highly successful festival, Music from Angel Fire, in New Mexico. A graduate of Juilliard studying with Oscar Shumsky, she made her NY debut under Young Concert Artists. She recently formed a new ensemble, Trio Valtorna, with pianist Gilles Vonsattel and hornist David Jolley. Her hobby is raising prize winning purebred Vizsla dogs.

Fred Sherry, cello
Cellist Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents and all 50 United States to the music of our time through his close association with such composers as Babbitt, Berio, Carter, Davidovsky, Foss, Knussen, Lieberson, Mackey, Takemitsu, Wuorinen, and Zorn. He has been a member of the Group for Contemporary Music, Berio's Juilliard Ensemble, the Galimir String Quartet, and a close collaborator with jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea. He was a founding member of Speculum Musicae and Tashi. He is on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School. In his extensive recording career, he has been soloist and "sideman" on hundreds of commercial and esoteric recordings; his longstanding collaboration with Robert Craft has produced recordings of major works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern. In 2001, in collaboration with the Chamber Music Society and Merkin Concert Hall, he created and directed A Great Day in New York, a groundbreaking festival featuring the music of 52 living composers. Mr. Sherry has been an Artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1984 and was its artistic director from 1989 to 1992.

Tara Helen O'Connor, flute
Flutist Tara Helen O'Connor is a charismatic performer sought after for her unusual artistic depth, brilliant technique, and colourful tone in music of every era. She is a member of the innovative woodwind quintet Windscape, a founding member of the 1995 Naumburg Award winning New Millennium Ensemble, and the flute soloist of the world renowned Bach Aria Group. A 2001 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, she also received two Grammy nominations in January of 2003 for Osvaldo Golijov's recording entitled Yiddishbbuk. She has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, EMI Classics, Arcadia, CRI, Koch, and Bridge Records. O'Connor was the first wind player to be chosen to participate in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two program for emerging artists. She now performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Spoleto USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, and the Brandenburg Ensemble.

An enthusiastic chamber musician and soloist, O'Connor has collaborated with such artists as Jaime Laredo, Peter Serkin, David Shifrin, Dawn Upshaw, Ida Kavafian, Ransom Wilson, Paula Robison, Charles Wadsworth, the Orion String Quartet, the St. Lawrence Quartet, the Tokyo Quartet, and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. She has been featured on A&E's Breakfast for the Arts and has appeared on a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast. She received a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and she is professor of flute at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music. She was appointed to the faculty at the newly created Bard College Conservatory of Music. An avid photographer, she has photo credits in Time Out, Strad, and Chamber Music America magazines.

David Shifrin, clarinet
One of only two wind players to have been awarded the Avery Fisher Prize since the award's inception in 1974, Mr. Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator.

Mr. Shifrin has appeared with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras and the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, Detroit and Denver symphonies among many others in the US, and internationally with orchestras in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, he has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Honolulu and Dallas symphonies and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and New York Chamber Symphony. Mr. Shifrin has also received critical acclaim as a recitalist, appearing at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City as well as the the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A sought after a chamber musician, he collaborates frequently with such distinguished ensembles and artists as the Guarneri, Tokyo, and Emerson String Quartets, Wynton Marsalis, and pianists Emanuel Ax and André Watts.

An artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1989, David Shifrin served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004. He has toured extensively throughout the US with CMSLC and appeared in several national television broadcasts on Live From Lincoln Center. He has also been the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon since 1981.

David Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale's annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary professorship at China's Central Conservatory in Beijing.

Mr. Shifrin's recordings on Delos, DGG, Angel/EMI, Arabesque, BMG, SONY, and CRI have consistently garnered praise and awards. He has received three Grammy nominations - for a collaborative recording with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of the collected chamber music of Claude Debussy (Delos), the Copland Clarinet Concerto (Angel/EMI) and Ravel's Introduction and Allegro with Nancy Allen, Ransom Wilson, and the Tokyo String Quartet (Angel/EMI).

His recording of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, performed in its original version on a specially built basset clarinet, was named Record of the Year by Stereo Review.

His latest recording, Shifrin Plays Schifrin (Aleph Records), is a collection of clarinet works by composer/conductor Lalo Schifrin. Both the recording of the Copland Clarinet Concerto and a 2008 recording of Leonard Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott have been released on iTunes via Angel/EMI and Deutsche Grammophon.

Mr. Shifrin continues to broaden the repertoire for clarinet and orchestra by commissioning and championing the works of 20th and 21st century American composers including, among others, John Adams, Joan Tower, Stephen Albert, Bruce Adolphe, Ezra Laderman, Lalo Schifrin, David Schiff, John Corigliano, Bright Sheng and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

In addition to the Avery Fisher Prize, David Shifrin is the recipient of a Solo Recitalists' Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 1998 Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Music Academy of the West. At the outset of his career, he won the top prize at both the Munich and the Geneva International Competitions. Mr. Shifrin resides in Connecticut with his wife and is the father of four children - Henry, Olivia, Sam and William.